Issues of Performance Appraisals Essay Example for Free

Issues of Performance Appraisals Essay Performance appraisal refers to the process, where in, an organization measures the performance of its employees against the performance or productivity standards set by it. For instance, an organization might review employees on the basis of the number of projects completed, goals achieved or sales targets met. Therefore, performance standards of one organization might be different from those of another. This further pinpoints the importance of performance appraisals in truly reflecting and impartially evaluating the performance of employees. A good performance appraisal will motivate employees and point out problematic areas. Whereas, a bad performance appraisal will be a waste of resources for any organization. Issues and Solutions Many organizations have trouble identifying the key areas that a performance appraisal has to address. They do not know, what they are trying to accomplish through a performance appraisal or how it will help them in employee evaluation. This can be established using the example of 360-degree feedback. â€Å"Typical mistakes organizations make are rushing into 360-degree appraisals without a clear idea of what they want them to achieve. † (McCurry P. (1999). New angle on 360-degree feedback. Director, 53, p. 36) Furthermore, organizations tend to use one particular tool in isolation, which does not yield reliable results. This should not be put into practice because one tool may not satisfy all the requirements of appraising. Moreover, appraisals need to take into account a comprehensive picture of performance. Using one particular tool can create a pigeon-hole view of what otherwise needed to be a holistic view of performance appraising. Ideally, an organization should know exactly what each tool can deliver, and use a combination of tools to assess different competencies. Organizations must assess pros and cons of different tools and handpick tools that suit their needs. Some tools that can be used are graphic rating scale, Behaviorally Anchored Rating Scales, alternation ranking, forced distribution method, critical incident method, management by objectives and 360-degree feedback. (cited in Dessler, 2006). Some organizations might use certain tools of conducting performance appraisals just because they are being followed in the industry. This again produces a serious loop hole in the entire process of conducting performance appraisals. Every organization has its own structure, and culture that defines it. Although industry best practices might exist even for performance appraisals, however, the same tool is not necessarily applicable to all organizations. For instance, Andrew Forrest implies; if an organization’s culture is characterized by bureaucratic hierarchies, and does not foster communication, then conducting a 360-degree feedback will be pointless in such an organization. (cited in McCurry P. (1999). New angle on 360-degree feedback. Director, 53, p. 36). Some tools of performance appraising may become obsolete with relevance to an employee or employees because the on job environment of the employee changes. The problem remains that same job dynamics do not hold true for an employee, and so the employee can not be evaluated on former standards. In such a scenario performance appraisers need to consider the exact dynamics of the job of the employee and then undertake evaluation. This solution serves the interest of the both the organization and the employee. As mentioned by Candy Albertsson, . â€Å"An individual may have a different boss or team one year or be doing different work, which can make findings hard to compare†. (cited in McCurry P. (1999). New angle on 360-degree feedback. Director, 53, p. 36). One of the most important issues pertaining to performance appraisals is the degree of its objectivity. Employees certainly do not want to be unfairly evaluated because that effects the rewards or compensations tied to their performance. To ensure objectivity and fairness, Gail Dutton recommends software based performance appraisals. â€Å"software-based performance-appraisals tend to focus on results and actions rather than personality traits, employees are more likely to view them as fair†. (Dutton G. (2001). Making reviews more efficient and fair. Workforce,80, p. 76). Other methods of ensuring impartial appraisals are using multiple evaluators for the appraisal process as this increases the probability of attaining more accurate information. This is because if more than one appraiser is used the chances of errors stemming from biasness, halo effect or central tendency can be reduced. Halo effect, biasness, and central tendencies are inherent problems of the appraising process that are related to the appraiser. Halo effect occurs when â€Å"the influence of a rater’s general impression on ratings of specific ratee qualities† (cited in G. Dessler, 2006). Biasness comes from the impartiality of the appraiser where the appraiser might hold something against some employee. For example, a supervisor may have a personal dislike of an employee that may affect the appraisal process. Whereas, central tendency is defined as â€Å" a tendency to rate all employees the same way, such as rating them all average†. (Dessler, 2006, p. 328). Therefore, using more than one appraiser can truly raise the accuracy of an appraisal. In addition, appraisers should be asked to appraise only those areas in which they have expertise because they will be able to precisely evaluate the areas they specialize in. Another method to increase accuracy and objectivity of appraisal is to train evaluators. Provided that evaluators are better trained they will have a clear understanding or standards and will make better decisions. (Robbins S. P. , Judge T. A. ,2007, 625). Another issue that stems from the use of software based performance appraisals is that they can contain a set of generic questions that are not suited for the jobs that are being evaluated. (Dutton G. (2001). Making reviews more efficient and fair. Workforce,80, p. 76). To overcome this issue organizations need to tailor their software to their performance evaluation needs. In order to process a fair evaluation, the questions need to be customized to the jobs that are being evaluated. Not only should it be customized to the jobs, but also to the performance standards the job entails. Doing so organizations can address this particular issue effectively. Some organizations might favor software or computer based performance appraisals because it increases efficiency of operation. It should be noted that incorporating software based performance appraisals just for speeding up the appraising process will do no good to the organization. It might help the organization effectively utilize resources, for example, time savings, and less use of paper. Nonetheless, appraisal just for the sake of appraisal should not be the prime concern of any organization. Rather even the software based appraising process should be used to support the true meaning of carrying out performance appraisals. To make the appraising process effective organizations should incorporate supportive techniques into their performance evaluations. They should use interviews as well as other tools because in my opinion no tool can undermine the importance of face to face communications. Although the software based performance appraising methods are useful, however, a combined approach of using different tools can give more accurate results. The human touch should not be totally eliminated from the appraising process. References Dessler G. (2006). Human Resource Management. Florida: Prentice Hall Dutton G. (2001). Making reviews more efficient and fair. Workforce,80, p. 76-81. McCurry P. (1999). New angle on 360-degree feedback. Director, 53, p. 36. Robbins S. P. , Judge T. A. (2007). Organizational Behavior. New Jersey: Prentice Hall

Use of Private Military Companies (PMCs) in Africa Essay -- Providing

PMCs emerge in a history course as an inevitable result of the changing in world structure and technology development. This critical review examines Anna Leander’s article on the paradox of implementing private military companies (PMCs) in Africa. The central issue is how security can be influenced by the using of PMCs. Building on Leander’s argument, this review argues that PMC is a double-edged sword that can be used to provide security as well as to stir insecurity. The blurred public and private lines and ambiguous regulations of PMCs cannot be neglect thus the use of PMC forces need stronger regulation and a better system of cooperation with other national or international actors. The review will first analyze the reasons for using PMCs as a way to support security in Africa mainly based on Leander’s views and partly on Singer’s points. Then the review will analyze factors contributing to the negative side of PMCs, especially in Darfur’s case a nd in Iraq’s case. Leander recognizes the paradoxical situation faces by employing private military companies’ forces to solve the security problems in Africa. As a matter of fact, the line between public and private security orders in weak African states has already been blurred (Leander, 2005, p.606). Private forces are inevitable actors in those African states, thus on the one hand, it is argued that encouraging PMCs in Africa is able to restore the order. In the special case of weak African states, the poor conditions and frequent conflicts call for such a â€Å"force multiplier† as the PMCs. Leader concludes four reasons that PMCs should be considered to organize the chaos in Africa. First, PMCs are external forces to break the cycles of violence in Africa (Leander, 2005, p.607). T... ...ch PMCs played important role in many major combat, while PMCs fill the gap between U.S army and locals and maintain the reconstruction projects after war, democracy issues also need to be considered. The hiring of PMCs is mostly directly through government and military forces, which means citizens can be easily excluded from the decision process when their money are spent on buying military services, possibly, to invade another country. Therefore, to conclude, the emergence of PMCs as crucial roles in Africa is an inevitable course. The wars do not find PMCs, but PMCs find wars and sell themselves. They will be frequent actors in the combat which can maintain and improve the local security. While on the contrary, to build a mature and secure system for PMCs, a lot more unstable factors need to be taken into consideration by international and national actors.

Coming of Age in Mississippi Essay

â€Å"No one’s life is a smooth sail; we all come into stormy weather.† This statement has more truth to it than one may think. In life, everybody reaches a rough point, a point where the light at the end of the tunnel seems dim, or even nonexistent. But overcoming this adversity is what builds character. Accepting and prevailing over life’s obstacles are what separate strong, independent-minded and forward-thinking people from those who give up and avoid their problems. Anne Moody, author of Coming of Age in Mississippi, lived a life of great struggle in which she overcame adversity with great efforts and a dedicated heart and mind. As an African-American female, Anne Moody had one of the hardest battles to fight throughout her life. With limited rights as a woman and even further limitations due to race, she often found herself being subordinated by others. While in high school, she left her hometown of Centreville, Mississippi to spend the summer in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. While there, she worked for a local woman, Mrs. Jetson, doing housework. After working for Mrs. Jetson for two weeks, Anne wished to collect her pay. When Anne found Mrs. Jetson’s house empty, she recalled â€Å"On Monday I did call the shoe store, and was told Mrs. Jetson had quit on Friday. I had never before felt so gypped in all my life. Out of all the women I had worked for this woman was the worst† (Moody 150). Anne had been cheated out of two weeks’ worth of pay. She was astonished at Mrs. Jetson’s audacity in failing to pay Anne what was rightfully hers. It was difficult to find jobs where she was treated with some dignity, and almost impossible to find ones where she was treated as her employer’s equal. Anne was forced to change jobs frequently on account of being disrespected and used. Although no scamming experience was as impactful on Anne as the one with Mrs. Jetson, Anne experienced similar situations in jobs she had prior and jobs she took afterward. The summer after being in Baton Rouge, Anne went back to Louisiana; this time she stayed in New Orleans. There, she managed to land a job in a chicken factory. What she expected to be a large, intricate, and somewhat clean workplace turned out to be a dreadful nightmare. To her shock, she found herself gutting freshly killed chickens for over ten hours a day  without gloves or proper sanitation whatsoever. Near the end of the day, Anne recollected her â€Å"face, arms, and clothes were splattered with blood and chicken shit. I got so disgusted at one point that I stood there and let about a dozen chickens half full of shit pass me by† (Moody 178). Along with the other factory workers, Anne is treated with the utmost disregard to dignity and sanitation. She is forced to work excruciatingly long hours for minimum wage, exposed to grotesque dead animals and susceptible to disease. Unfortunately, because the pay was better than most other jobs in the area, Anne was forced to stick with her factory work. She worked in the factory for a month, saving her money and gaining exposure to the various stations in the factory. Although she did make very good money under the circumstances, she was deeply affected by her work; for years she could not eat chicken and for the rest of her life she refused to eat boxed chicken. The challenge of going to work every morning knowing what she was going to endure was tough, but her willpower and need for money helped her push through. After high school, Anne applied to and attended Natchez College in Mississippi. During her second year, she was eating in the cafeteria on campus when she and a few other classmates found maggots in their food. Disgusted, she and her classmates stormed into the kitchen to find an explanation for the repulsive experience. She â€Å"knew exactly where the grits were kept from the time I had worked in the kitchen. I went straight to the pantry and saw that there was a big leak from the showers upstairs. The water was seeping right down onto the shelves† (Moody 256). Anne and her classmates boycotted the campus cafeteria and its food, refusing to yield until some sanitary fixes were implemented. The challenge here was finding other ways to stay fed. The students did not have enough money to last them more than a week or so, so eventually they all started back, one by one, to the cafeteria and its semi-sanitary food. Still repulsed, Anne refused to go back and began losing a lot of weight. She became so thin and hungry all the time that she resorted to writing her mother who brought her enough canned food to last the remainder of the semester. The challenge in staying fed with healthy, sanitary food was one which presented itself on a large scale for Anne at college and otherwise. Had she been unable to obtain food from  her family, she may have starved to the point of fainting or even death. Overcoming this challenge was just about a matter of life or death for Anne. One of Anne’s most prominent memories and experiences in her early life was during her college career when she participated in a sit-in in Woolworth. The idea of the sit-in was to sit calmly at a white lunch counter and ask for service; thus, blacks wanted to show they wished to be treated equally. Of course, doing such a thing drew a lot of attention in very little time, and soon after the sit-in began a large crowd formed in the restaurant. After the crowd of whites realized Anne and her fellow sit-in participants would not budge until they received service, â€Å"the mob started smearing us [sit-in participants] with ketchup, mustard, sugar, pies, and everything on the counter. Soon Joan and I were joined by John Salter, but the moment he sat down he was hit on the jaw with what appeared to be brass knuckles. Blood gushed from his face and someone threw salt into the open wound† (Moody 291). The violence that occurred at the sit-in that Anne and her friends had to endure is almost unimaginable. The absolute disrespect, degradation, and cruelty shown to blacks by whites is virtually unbelievable, yet Anne was faced with challenges like these almost every day. Amazingly, Anne was courageous, intelligent, and controlled enough not to fight back and to remain nonviolent no matter what violence was shown to her. Her ability to not fight fire with fire is remarkable, and helped her to overcome the adversity which she so often found herself facing.

USSR Will Get a Bomb, It Just Matters if US Can Hold Them Off

USSR will get a bomb, it just matters if US can hold tehm off Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) should have shared limited information on the Manhattan Project with the Soviet Union (USSR) in order to bolster the integrity of their momentary coalition, promote international scientific collaboration, as well as prevent the eventual possibility of a nuclear armaments race. By the end of WWII Soviets spies had so deeply infiltrated the Manhattan Project that the possibility of keeping atomic weapons under an Anglo-American monopoly became increasing unlikely. If the Big Three had been given joint responsibility over the American atomic bomb, the need for producing a Soviet bomb would no longer have exist. This Soviet-American atomic†¦show more content†¦Had FDR shared nuclear information with the USSR, increased cooperation between the world powers post WWII would have diluted rising tensions between the polar ideologies. Once introduced to atomic weaponry, the Big Three would have necessary power to act as nuclear policemen, able to re gulate international production of nuclear armaments. Maintain balance of power with diplomatic relations with USSR. With each world power checking each other, USSR must be regarded as a power because they are power hungry. During allied war meetings it quickly became apparent that Joseph Stalin, Premier of the USSR, could not be satisfied by FDR’s diplomacy, and would deliberate every small point to the bitter end as long as it supported his own interests. With the failure of the League of Nations post WWI, FDR knew realized that small compromises must be made to ensure that greater peace was reached. However, the advent of the atomic bomb presented FDR both a powerful military and diplomatic tool to be used in these post war negotiations with Stalin. As each of the Big Three entered these negotiations at Tehran with each their own goals, FDR, Stalin, and the prime minister of the UK Churchill were still able to agree with each other on major military decisions such as wartime strategy. Knowing that each world leader had thisShow MoreRelatedThe Use, Impact, and Future of Nuclear Weapons1378 Words   |  5 PagesEverything from small handheld weapons to large remote control bombs. Not all countries have bombs, but the ones who do use them for different purposes. When people think of the word bomb, the first thing that comes to mind is war. Not all bombs are used for war. They are actually used for research, and a lot of people are not aware of that. Bombs in the past compared to the current stage of bombs are drastically different. 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